


45 Minutes To Get All Dressed Up

by Paraxdisepink



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6898465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paraxdisepink/pseuds/Paraxdisepink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So you like cats and assassins," Sam said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	45 Minutes To Get All Dressed Up

**Author's Note:**

> There was tumblr talk of Beyonce's "Partition" being a Winterpanther song and Bucky carried out on a stretcher. And after some Steve talk in my askbox, I amused myself imagining his emotionally constipated reaction at these two making each other happy.

The medical team rushed ahead of Steve as the limo pulled in. Bucky was in there and cold terror squeezed Steve's chest. He knew this would happen, that someone would hunt him, find him even here, that T'challa's boasts wouldn't be good enough.

The limo's back door opened and Wakanda's king stepped out. He was out of breath, pushed to the edge of his considerable stamina, lips swollen and fancy suit ripped all over. Bruises marked his arms through the tears in the silk jacket. They darkened the back of his neck too where someone had gripped him hard and Steve thought he saw bite marks peaking out from under his half torn collar. Whoever had attacked him, the fight had been pretty well matched.

Was it him? Had some remaining tentacle of HYDRA found another way into Bucky's head?

Steve pushed his way forward, shield on his arm. "What happened?" he demanded.

T'challa stepped aside to let the medical team crawl into the limo. They hadn't come to descend on him and that only made the dread thicker. But T'challa was in no hurry to answer, glancing behind him where they were lifting Bucky from the backseat onto a stretcher, starting an IV in his arm.

After a moment, T'challa met Steve's eyes. "Your friend," he said with a smile Steve couldn't read, "finally got what he deserved."

Steve felt strangled, kicked in the stomach. Why harbor Bucky if that's how he felt? Why bother with a medical team?

They brought him out and Bucky's hair was tousled, as if someone had clenched it, balled their fists in it with both hands. He sprawled on the stretcher too wrung out to move and his clothes were just as torn as T'challa's, silk dress shirt ripped in enough places to show off a brand new Vibranium arm.

When had that happened? 

His head lolled to one side, in T'challa's direction, exposing fresh forming bruises on his throat. Steve could see more on his thighs too, where his pants were torn, and he wasn't prepared for the smile on Bucky's face, drowsy and blissed-out and...

Sam stood at Steve's shoulder, looking from Bucky to T'challa, weighting the situation.

"So you like cats and assassins," he said.

T'challa gave him another smile, armored as ever in dignity. "Former assassin," he corrected. "Now a very unique guest. As I said, he got what he deserved."

Bucky's exhausted smile widened until it crinkled the corners of his eyes as the medics rolled him past. "So did you, pal," he rasped with a wink for T'challa that for a bare moment honestly seemed to fluster him.

He recovered himself and Steve took a second look at the marks on Bucky's neck, at T'challa's swollen lips, and their torn clothes. Those were fingerprints on Bucky's thighs, and all the panic from the crisis Steve had imagined seeped out of him until he felt like he had a hole in the middle of his chest.

The two of them, all over each other, Bucky giving back as good as he got. And the way Bucky's eyes lingered on him as the medics wheeled him toward the palace. That smile on his face.

"This your way of helping him 'find peace'?"

T'challa's face hardened at something in Steve's tone. "Is there a problem, Captain?"

It was a challenge. Maybe a warning that Bucky didn't belong to him and he wouldn't tolerate jealousy or Steve's objections.

Steve clenched his jaw. He had plenty. Bucky barely knew who he was, He only remembered half the good times Steve brought up whenever he had the chance to visit. He was supposed to be his way back to everything Steve had lost, but there he was, with his shiny Vibranium arm, amused as the medics carted him off to his room on the king's orders. A different person.

"No," Steve bit out after too long of a pause. "Guess he likes it here."

T'challa nodded and left him to join the minor commotion through the palace doors. He and Bucky smiled at each other, and he batted away Bucky's metal hand with a command that had no real presumption of authority over him.

Steve clenched his jaw harder, shoving down everything he felt. He was relieved when Clint came in over his earpiece that the rest of the team could use his help with a HYDRA cell operating underground out of Saint-Tropez.

**Author's Note:**

> I have actual winterpanther ideas. I'm just annoyed with MCU Steve after CW sorry.


End file.
